Curse Breaker Weasley and the Box of Pandora
by labtc
Summary: The adventures of Bill Weasley, cursebreaker for Gringotts bank, in his time after graduation from Hogwarts until he returns to Britain to fight Lord Voldemort. Sand, temples and tombs, heat, new friends and characters, sand, cute witches for Bill to become interested in, sand, pyramids and treasure, and lastly lots and lots of sand.


The heat was unbearable. It was that sticky humid heat, where your clothing nearly joins with your skin and the sweat constantly drips out of your pores. Everyone says the desert is a dry heat, Bill wasn't sure about that; sure in the open it wasn't terribly bad, but when you were sitting in a stuffy tent it was suffocating.

Bill had just graduated from Hogwarts a month ago and this was his first day on the job, great first day so far, sweating his pants off in the middle of a desert. Gringotts had accepted his application to become a curse breaker several months ago dependant on his N.E.W.T. results; the job which he'd coveted since his fifth year at Hogwarts was now his to make of what he wished. He only wished it wasn't so hot. In his childhood Bill had wanted to be a star quidditch player of course, every magical boy (and many magical girls) wanted to be a star quidditch player and he was no different. It wasn't until he was old enough to realize that he wasn't all that great at quidditch, somewhere between his second and third years at Hogwarts that his interests turned toward more adult professions. He flipped between unspeakable, and a black market potions dealer until his fifth year when he was thumbing through the career pamphlets in the common room and became excited about the possibility of curse breaking; not to mention it was much more legal then a black market potions dealer, and much more interesting sounding then an unspeakable (his father said no one really knew what they got up to, but it was very academic, and he was more hands on). After talking it over with McGonagall in his career advice session she told him he would need N.E.W.T.S. in Arithmancy, Defense against the Dark Arts, Charms, and Ancient Runes, as well Transfiguration wouldn't hurt his chances. That was a pretty stacked course load if you asked Bill, but the allure of raiding ancient tombs, breaking down wards that had stood for millennia, and nullifying traps set by the brightest wizards alive thousands of years ago was enough to see him sign up for that amount of work. All that work had earned him a position as head boy in his final year, and had taken away the chance of having a serious girlfriend.

"Doesn't really seem worth it does it buddy?" stated the blonde haired man next to him. He was the same age as Bill, but a few inches shorter and sporting a boyish grin as he twirled his ward around his fingers and pushed his hair off his sweating forehead. By his accent he was not British, he sounded American but not really, bill couldn't quite place it.

"What was that?" questioned bill as he was shaken from his daydreaming of what it had taken to get to this point in his life.

"I don't know about how it works where you're from but I had to bust my ass in school to get here, only to be sittin' in this tent for like two hours now. And Merlin the heat is gonna kill me."

"I was just thinking about what it took to get here, but I'm sure it'll be worth it." Replied Bill with a smile. It was just these two boys, hardly old enough to be considered men, who occupied the tent. Bill had arrived there almost two hours ago to find the other occupant already sitting in a chair, they had only nodded to one another until this conversation. He had portkeyed from his parents house in Ottery, St. Catchpole with a portkey supplied with his acceptance letter from Gringotts. That was all the information he was supplied with,

_Dear Mr. Weasley,_

_ We are pleased to inform you that we have accepted your application for the position of __**CURSE BREAKER**__, Your posting will be __**EGYPT**__. You are expected to report for orientation at 10 a.m. (EET) on the 20__th__ of August, 1989. Your supervisor will be Curse Breaker (CB) Phillips. Please use the enclosed portkey at 8:30 a.m. (GMT) to arrive at your posting in time for your orientation. We look forward to a long and profitable future with you._

_Regards,_

_Tilfulk_

_Director - Artifact Recovery Division_

Upon his arrival all he could see was several tents, a few broken down looking pyramids in the distance, and a goblin leaning against a few crates in the shade. The goblin was dressed quite unlike what he was used to for a goblin, this one was wearing khaki shorts with what appeared to be several dozen pockets, a thin white linen shirt also with 4 large pockets down the front, and a straw hat with a black ribbon around it. He was lounging against the crates obviously uninterested in what he was doing.

"The furthest tent on the right." Was all he uttered when Bill appeared, without even glancing at the person the message was intended for.

Bill replied with a thank you before hoisting his duffel bag onto his shoulder and trudging through the scorching sand toward the furthest tent on the right. That's where he currently found himself, the furthest tent on the right. It wasn't much to be honest, there was a large square table in the middle of the magically expanded interior, an even larger panel of clear glass against one 'wall' with about 2 dozen folding wooden chairs arranged in several rows facing the glass. Then there was six brown armchairs in another corner of the room, two of which were currently occupied by himself and his new friend.

"So, what's your name?", questioned Bill friendly.

"Name's Tony Churchill, What's yours?"

"I'm Bill Weasley, nice to meet you Tony."

"You too. So Bill where you from?"

"England, a town in Devon. What about you?" answered Bill.

Before Tony had a chance to open his mouth with an answer the flap of the tent flew open and in came a tall well muscled man in his mid thirties. He was over six feet tall with black short black hair and wearing black army boots with long khaki pants, his were also covered in pockets but some were full to bursting with unknown objects. He had a loose fitting black t-shirt on that showed off his carved muscles on his chest and arms, peeking out from under the sleeves of the shirt Bill could see several tattoos. The most striking aspect of this man however was not his physical appearance but rather that he was smiling while pointing his wand at his forearm sporting a deep gash that was currently dripping blood all over the sand floor of the tent.

"Vulnera Sanetur", he uttered as a faint light glowed over the gash and it began knitting itself together leaving no sign at all, save the still wet blood on his arm, that he had ever been wounded.

"So, you two are my new recruits eh? Ya look alright to me. Hope you don't mind a few injuries like this one, they happen... a lot." He said as he wiped his bloodied forearm off into the fabric of the tent wall. "What's your names?"

"Bill Wesley." Said Bill as he stood up to shake the man's hand.

"Tony Churchill." Parroted Tony quickly after bill as he took stood and took the man's hand after Bill.

"Good, no stupid complicated names like Sebastian or Maximilian or anything like that. I'm Leo Phillips, curse breaker and your new boss I suppose." He replied with his hand shakes.

"So let's see what you two know, what do you think this job is?" Asked Leo. A simple question for sure but it had both Bill and Tony stumped for a second.

"Breaking curses?" questioned Tony tentatively.

"Hmm, right Nobel laureate over here." Said Leo almost to himself as he dragged one of the other armchairs over so that three were in a small triangle facing each other and sat down motioning the other two to do the same.

"Ok it's simple" started Leo, "There's all these tombs, burial sites, ancient places basically, that were left lying around from thousands of years ago. They are all over the world, but usually in the places that had major empires, Egypt, Italy, Persia, China, South America, to name a few of the major ones. Some of them the muggles have found, but most are found by wizarding governments or treasure hunters. We have two separate jobs as curse breakers, one is to secure any muggle found locations and rid it of any latent magical activity. That's where you'll be starting off, it's the less dangerous of the two jobs, one of the more senior CB's has usually done all the hard stuff first, you're just there to get rid of all the left over curses, and hex's and magical traps that may be lurking. The other job is when we find an undisturbed site we force our way through any of the magical protections and recover the treasure. We aren't grave robbers here. Gringotts is contracted by the government that owns the land and we as curse breakers recover the artifacts from those sites for the government that has contracted Gringotts. We break down wards, fight magical enchantments, disable hexes, counteract ancient charms, you name it we have probably had to do it at some point. So got the basic idea?"

"Umm yeah I think." Stammered Bill, what had he gotten himself into with this job? He didn't know how to do most of that stuff! It was only looking over to the dumbfounded face of Tony that saved him from running away at that moment, apparently he was just as prepared as his counterpart.

"I know it's a lot to take in, but it's really not that bad, and we'll train you as much as we can but most if just hands on practice honestly. You can't really train for a situation that's never happened before, and most of these traps and wards are so old we have never heard of them, you just have to go with your gut and be prepared when it all goes sideways on you." Reassured Leo with a toothy smile.

Bill was not reassured, and from the looks of it neither was Tony. After his little pep talk Leo led them both out of the tent and into the one next door to it. This one was rather sparse, with a small sitting area as soon as they walked in and two rooms off either side, one for each of the boys, it would be their new quarters.

"Alright guys, drop your shit into one of the rooms and follow me, let's see what we've got to work with." He said quickly as he left them both standing there in the living area with their bags and went back into the previous tent. They both threw their gear into a room and followed Leo out of the tent.

When they arrived back the previous tent Leo was standing in front of the glass panel and gestured them both to take a seat in the chairs facing the glass.

"This is our board" he said matter of factly, "It's where we plan our missions."

"You see this little black ball?" he asked as he dug two small round jet black balls that were stuck together and both the size of marbles out of one of the many pockets on his pants and showed them. "This is a copy ball set. It's what we use before we go into any site we are exploring. All you need to do is toss one of these balls into the room, or hall way, or cave, wherever you need to go. Then you take the other ball and place it in this little divot on the bottom corner of the screen."

He showed them where the little divot was and how it popped in there easily and stayed without any effort. "There's also a similar divot on that table over there, but that's used for a three dimensional model, we only need two dimensions in this case. And this screen gives us more information than the three dimensional model does, which I'll explain later."

He removed the black ball and placed it back with its pair before digging out another ball, this one by itself and placing it in the glass divot. "This is the partner to a ball that is already in place in the tomb that you will both be working on today." The screen blinked a few times before a flat map of the tomb appeared. It was only about twenty feet by twenty feet, about double the size of a normal household bedroom. In the far side from the entrance of the tomb there was a faint blue glow that surrounded a rectangular box on the map, it had very stark and well defined outlines as far as Bill could see. Dotted around the room in several other locations were red dots, some brighter than others but not overly dark, most were a pinkish tint.

"This is obviously the map of the tomb you'll be going into today, as you can see the ball in there provides its partner with a map of the room which we can see here. You're probably wondering about the colors, Red dots are curses, hexes, traps, whatever. The darker the color the more dangerous the trap usually is. This isn't an exact science, sometimes they don't even show up, and sometimes when they are real light they could kill you. Just be careful. Blues are wards, I'm sure you're familiar with the theory behind wards, they in some way stop you from gaining entrance to a specific area. How this is done and what happens when you try to gain entrance to that area is dependent on the ward that's protecting it. Can either of you tell me what all wards have in common?"

"They all have at least two anchor points." Answered Bill.

"Usually a magical artifact or a stone with runes carved into it." Added Tony to Bills answer.

"Finally two new people who at least know something, you two will do fine here." Smiled back Leo. "Yes you're right, they need anchor points in several places, usually surrounding whatever they are protecting. So neutralize the anchors, and the ward falls. If that's not an option, then wing it. There's also green dots, but there's none of them on this map, they indicate runic traps. A runic trap is a set of runes carved into stone that when walked by or on trigger something to happen, usually something very nasty like a bunch of spells flying at your face, or pressurized potions falling from the ceiling."

Both Bill and Tony were just nodding, this job seemed more dangerous than either had anticipated when they applied.

"So, I know what you're thinking, mostly because it's exactly what I was thinking about 15 years ago when I was sitting right where you are now. Well not right where you are, I was in china for my first contract but same idea. You're thinking 'Holy shit! I'm gonna die in my first week, screw this!' But you aren't, we'll start you slow. And you haven't even heard what the pay is yet." finished Leo with a big grin. "The base pay starting off is shit, you only get 25 Galleons a week, but you also get a 1% commission on all the treasure and artifacts that you recover for Gringotts. Which let me tell you can be quite a lot of gold."

"You can leave now if you want, but something tells me you won't be. Should I make a portkey for either of you to go back home?" questioned Leo with a false seriousness. Neither of the two young men took him up on this offer. "Great, well follow me out of here and we'll get you started."

Bill and Tony looked at each other with dreams of future adventures dancing in their eyes, neither of the two could wait to get started. Thankfully Leo wasn't one for waiting either. After following him outside the tent for the second time that day, and following a quick conversation of their destination, the three of them apperated to the ruins that Bill had noticed in the distance upon his arrival.

-0-0-0-

The three popped into existence about ten feet from the entrance to a tomb. It stood before them like a large beige colored canvas; the tomb was carved into the side of a much more imposing building that appeared to have been discovered decades earlier. The entrance to the room which they were about to enter was just tall enough for a person to stand comfortably without having to crouch over at the neck. Flanked on either side by brightly colored pillars painted in blues and reds, the doorway itself stood imposing as the light seemed incapable of penetrating more than 5 feet into the interior of the tomb. Leo motioned them inside with a nod of his head and began to talk about the place as they made their way into the inky darkness of the tomb.

"The larger building was discovered hidden under heavy notice-me-not charms, invisibility spells, and repelling wards about 40 years ago. It was only discovered because a diplomat for the French ministry embassy in Cairo struck a bird while out for a fly around on a carpet which sent him into a flat tail spin. He was shocked when instead of crashing into the ground he ended up flat on his back in midair obviously being supported by something he couldn't see but could certainly feel. We didn't find this side entrance until last week. One of the other guys at camp was a bit full of the good stuff after a party we had, no one is sure why and can't remember, but he apperated here and started wandering around. Apparently he needed a piss so stood against the wall but his stream hit nothing, just went right thought what looked like solid wall. The next morning he told us what his foggy hung-over brain remembered and we found the place. Doesn't seem like much was in here though to be honest, just this hallway that we are now at the beginning of with the room at the end that you both seen on the map. Bit heavily warded and protected for nothing if you ask me. Anyway boys lets light our tips up and get in there. Lumos"

Both Bill and Tony repeated the spell to make their wands glow and provide a light source. The light bathed the hallway in an eerie iridescent glow that seemed to cast long shadows behind the junk that littered the hallway where the walls met the floor. Old broken pots littered the floor with ancient cobwebs hanging off them.

"Ok guys first mistake, we always work in teams of two or more for our safety. One casts lumos while the other has his wand ready in case of anything unexpected. Stay close together so that the light benefits you both, but not so close that one trap or spell could take you both out." Guided Leo as he fell to the back of the group, "Ok Tony you keep the light going, Bill drop your lumos and prepare to cast a shield or neutralize any threat that may pop up. The room is just ahead, we haven't cleared it yet, just this hall. Once we scanned it and nothing overly dangerous was in there we figured we could wait and see how you two would do with it. Well get to it."

Bill and Tony were both nervous. They stood outside a completely unexplored room, a sanctum that no one had set foot in for well over two thousand years. Merlin knew what awaited them inside; the map said that directly opposite the door to the room should be a rectangular… something protected by some kind of ward. As well dotted around the room was a series of other protections or magic of some sort that was most likely not of the friendly persuasion. Both young men steeled themselves for the adventure that awaited them.

"When we get in there find some way to keep that light going without your wand, I don't want to face this myself." Said Bill and they began to formulate a plan of attack.

"I know a spell; it'll stick the light to a wall. You any good with wards?" countered Tony as he practiced the wand movement for the spell he knew to stick light somewhere.

"Perfect, that will work, and you're teaching me that after." Answered Bill. That seemed to be a useful spell to know in this line of work, "I'm ok with wards, but I'd rather we both focus on the dark things first and tackle the wards second. How about you?"

"Agreed, you take the right I'll take the left, backs to one another so nothing can sneak up on us then."

"Alright, meet at the ward then, let's go." Finished Bill with a smile to his partner as they both entered the room together. Had either of them had more experience they would know that a plan rarely survives first contact with an adversary. This case was no different.

They slowly entered the room without any incident, something that surprised both of them. Tony got to work right away making the lighting situation more permanent while Bill guarded his back.

"Lumos maxina pila." Uttered Tony as a brightly glowing ball the size of a grapefruit popped out of his wand. It illuminated the entire room in a light bright enough to work in. At the far wall was a sarcophagus, this was obviously the rectangular object they noticed in on a map. Scattered around the room were several pieces of broken earthenware, jugs, vases and the like. Along with those broken ancient artifacts of no value were boxes of varying sizes and shapes, no larger than a student's chest for school, most a lot smaller. These must be protected by the curses and other dangerous magic indicated on the map. Tony stuck his wand into the glowing ball and pulled it back, with a quick flick of his wrist and the incantation, "Affigo" the ball jetted toward the middle of the ceiling and stuck there like a modern day muggle pot light.

"Let's do this." Said Tony to Bill as he set off towards the left side of the room.

Bill came to a small box first, it was about the size of a shoebox and sealed all the way around without any noticeable way to get into it. He could feel the dark magic radiating out of the box, whatever it was this box was protected. Bill readied his wand to cast a series of diagnostic charms to determine the specific class of curse placed on this item.

"Sisto Genus Maldicto" incanted Bill as he twirled his wand over the malicious box. Words began to appear as if written in the air in neat rows where his wand was waving moments prior.

Curse

Unknown origin

Pain and cutting

Level 2/10

This gave Bill some indication of what he would be dealing with. This spell searched a predetermined catalog of spells and curses, it matched the characteristics of those curses with the one if was diagnosing in an attempt to determine that curse it was. In this case Bill could tell the curse was so old it wasn't listed on his catalog of curses, but the spell could recognize traits of it as being similar to other pain curses and cutting curses it knew of. That was at least something. As well it classed it as a level 2 spell, meaning it was quite mild in comparison to what was out there. Whatever it was going to do it probably wouldn't kill him or even hurt him to bad. Armed with this information Bill set to work.

"Fax secant" began Bill while pointing his wand tip toward the box. The spell he was attempting was a cutting spell used for metal smithing. It wasn't used for any fine work but rather just to cut large pieces of metal into rough shapes. He was hoping to cut his way into the box.

Several seconds passed and it looked as if he was making some progress, thick black smoke smelling of burnt metal was rising into the air. The box suddenly began to fight back at this point. It sent out a bright red flash and the back of Bill's had was cut open and began to bleed. Causing him to drop his wand in fright.

"Shit!" exclaimed Bill as he quickly picked his wand back up and cast an even quicker healing spell on the back of his hand to stem the flow of blood.

"You alright over there buddy?" questioned Tony from the other side of the room where he too was working on a box, however his was much larger.

"Yeah, bloody box sliced open the back of my hand when I tried to open it. I should have known better. How are you doing?" answered Bill slightly embarrassed.

"I'm doing alright, I think this one is cursed to make you forget how to do things, every time I try to cast a spell on it to open it I forget what I'm doing. I only remember when I'm not trying to open it, and then when I try to get it open, poof I forget how. Annoying it is."

"Good luck mate, and just be thankful yours doesn't try to make you bleed." Answered Bill as he prepared for a new tactic. This time he'd just cast a strong form of the spell that ended incantations before he tried to cut the box open again.

"Finis apud incantamenta" yelled Bill. He didn't really have to yell a spell, but it just felt so much better when casting a strong one that most wizards and witches did it without even realizing. A purple beam hit the box with force and engulfed it in a bright purple glow. As soon as the box was completely covered in the purple hue flecks of red started to flash across the outside. The purple and red danced across the outside of the box in a battle to see which spell would prevail. After what seemed like a very long wait for Bill, when in fact it had only been just over 20 seconds, the red subsided in one final flash and the purple color dimmed as it sunk into the metallic finish of the box.

Bill conjured himself a pair of chainmail gloves, he wasn't going to get cut again, and retried his cutting spell. This time without any incident thankfully. As the spell finished cutting its way through he box and the top was able to be pried off Bill had a sense of excitement well up in his stomach. This was his first broken curse, his first real accomplishment in his new job. He pulled the top off the box and looked inside.

Sitting in a corner of the box was a small chunk of something metallic, it had been burnished black from the soot created from Bill's cutting charm. Bill removed it and after wiping the black coating from the metal noticed it shown bright yellow.

"Awesome." Cooed Bill as he looked on at his find. This caught the attention of Tony who was just getting into his box as well.

"What you find there Bill?" He questioned as he leaned over into his crate and pulled out a large heavy bag that was jingling metallically.

"I think it's a nugget of gold." He replied with awe as he kept looking at the gold nugget. He held in his hands now more money this his entire family possessed.

"Cool! I hope mine's gold too!" exclaimed Tony as he tipped his bag out onto the floor.

"…spoons. You get gold and I find a bag of rusty bent spoons. Figures." Grunted Tony dejectedly. Bill could only laugh at his new friend.

"Come on let's get the rest of this sorted before we tackle that ward over there." Encouraged Bill as he placed his gold nugget with Tony's spoon collection.

The two made short work of the remaining boxes and crates in the room, encountering several mild curses to cause pain, and one that would have severed the fingers of anyone who tried to touch the box. Bill ended up walking on the ceiling after Tony ducked out of the way of a stray curse fired from one of his selected objects; it hit Bill squarely in the back as he tried to disable a chest that was set to spray acid on the person who tried to open it. A quick spell and Bill was back the right way up but Tony was laughing at him for several minutes after. All they found in the remaining boxes was on par with Tony's original find, a few blank scrolls, some metal ingots of unknown type, and a stone tablet carved with ancient writings. They put those with the other loot they had collected and both converged on the ward protecting the sarcophagus.

"Looks like we have 4 anchor points." Indicated Bill as he pointed to the four corners of the high class coffin. "If we take one on opposite corners at the same time it should collapse."

"Yep, I'll take the left side front, you take the right back? Sound good?" replied Tony rhetorically as he got into position. Bill nodded his consent and took his place as well.

"On three," began Bill as he held up three fingers to count down as well. "One… Two… Three…"

"Perdat arx" they both said in unison. A thin silver beam shot of both their wands and connected with their anchor points. With a dull click and a high pitched bang the ward shimmered all the colors of a rainbow, like a bubble floating in the summer or dish liquid in the sink, before it disappeared again. Before the two men could celebrate their victory over the ward there was a loud crash from each wall. The walls on either side of the chamber suddenly crashed down and standing behind them was a half a dozen skeletal soldiers on either side they slowly shook off the dost of millennia and raised their sharp looking weapons into a battle stance. They were ready for a fight.

"Shit." Was what both boys said in unison, they scrambled to get their backs against the only wall still standing and ready themselves for a fight.

Bill looked at Tony with trepidation etched into his face, "You take the six on the left, I'll take the six on the right?"

"Sounds like an alright plan, good luck buddy."

"You too." Replied Bill and he squared his jaw for what was to be the biggest fight of his life. Seconds later the twelve skeleton warriors charged the two wizards with their weapons held over their heads and an unearthly scream emerging from their gaping mouths.


End file.
